Jeffrey Santos Essays (896 words) - Literature, Raw, Comics

Jeffrey Santos 12/11 /2017 Professor Shrivastava Final Exam Essay: The Complete Maus and Representation: What is the significance of the author's decision to portray people of different races and nationalities as different animals? What effect does this have on the understanding and impact of the story? In The Complete Maus , the book is written about a man's experience in the holocaust. Artie uses a comic strip to help us readers stay in tune with the book but in doing so he also uses animals to distinguish "who's who" in the book. Throughout Maus all the characters are portrayed as animal figures to represent their different races, religions, and nationalities. The main attacking figures during the holocaust, the Jews, were identified as mice while the Germans are identified as the cats, hence, making a clear representation of the real life situation with cats and mice. The Nazi's main enemies, the Americans, are shown as dogs, the British as fish since they are naval experts, the Poles who are pigs, and the French are represented as frogs because of their love for frog legs and romance. This all basically showing how the German cats are after the Jewish mice while the American dogs are trying to chase off the cats to save the mice. Nazi's usually referred to the Poles as pigs back during this time so this is not a surprising name for them. The relationships of the animals have a large impact on the understanding of the animal choices and also portray the Holocaust extremely well. The Jewish depicted as the mice carries an idea of different attitudes towards the Jewish people such that they are harmless, tiny, but also inhuman at the same time. The Germans portraying as cats brings out the strength of the Holocaust experience, in which when cats catch mice they do not just kill them, they capture, torture, and then kill. With this interpretation being in place, it allows the Germans to kill with no remorse and have no guilty conscience. A mouse is just prey to a cat, similarly to the Jews being prey to the Germans during this large genocide. The Americans are represented as dogs. This illustration suggests power, loyalty, and other generally good aspects. The regular everyday dog does not get along with cats and may attack them if frightened. A strong relation to an active cartoon is Tom and Jerry, in which a dog will protect a mouse from a cat. Dogs also show friendliness which is something the Jews needed at this time and also something the Germans despised. A common nickname from the American G.I. during WWII was the term "dogface". This could have also influenced Artie to choose dogs for the Americans in this novel. There are a few pros and cons to depicting humans as humans rather than animals. Depicting humans as humans would alter any feelings the Jews and the other races felt during this time. Depicting humans as animals created a dispute mainly because of the troubles people would have viewing themselves as an animal rather than a human being. A major con to showing humans as humans is that it would most likely be extremely difficult to show how the Jews were forced to put a mask on themselves and act normal while deep down they were experiencing something we all will never understand. The Jews were forced to mask themselves during this time so the Germans could not figure out whether they were a Jew or not. For most, this would be extremely difficult especially when dealing with a religion . With religion, most people are extremely passionate and faithful and when one has to go against that just to remain breathing; it must have made them feel terribl y . The biggest con to using humans as the characters is how easy it would have been to tell them apart from a racial view. With Artie's method of using animals and masks, this was not a major problem for the Jews in the book. The Poles being represented as pigs is a bit more complicated in a sense. Pigs are usually viewed as selfish dirty animals. In the story, the Polish